Handling a 10x Employee

Definition of a 10xer: Someone who brings 10 times the value to their company as compared to their peers.

This actually originated as “10x Engineer” in a 1968 paper that showed data that the best programmers were actually 10 times better than the worst programmers! 1968!

It however, gained a whole lot of popularity when investor Shekhar Kirani posted a series of tweets in Nov 2019 asking founders to search for 10x engineers.

It’s not limited to engineers, of course, and can be broadened to a 10x Employee instead. They are most needed in Startups, because early decisions make a huge impact on the startup’s trajectory. It’s the foundation on which the whole skyscraper would be built - so you need to find the “10x team” to grow massively.

Let’s look at some of the things which define a 10xer:

They hate meetings.

Even, Jeff Bezos follows this with his “2-pizza rule”. Meetings have to be meaningful, so people can focus on what they need to be doing.

They prioritise ruthlessly.

They follow this very simple rule:

• Prioritise High Value - High Urgency tasks

• Reschedule High Value - Low Urgency tasks

• Delegate Low Value - High Urgency tasks

• Decline Low Value - Low Urgency tasks

They NEED to work in peace.

They may come in early, NOT stay late or Work-From-Home (Actually WORK!) .. but they need space to give their best. Continuous distractions are not something that work for them.

They are the “DOers”

They observe a problem, define multiple options on what might work, try them, track them and double down. They dig deep into the “why” things didn’t work.. and equally for the things that did.

They believe in very strong execution. They understand that “speed is the key” in execution. Why? If you spend a whole lot of endless-meetings in trying to figure out what works… the world has already changed. So, what would have worked “then”, won’t work “now”. See the rate at which social media algorithms change. Carousels worked a couple of weeks ago in LinkedIn.. but has lost it’s astonishingly high outreach today.

They have the “growth mindset”

They believe that “getting out of the comfort zone” is a muscle .. and needs to be exercised regularly. Hence, they have the “Dragonfly Eye” - by which they are able to catch trends before other people.

Don’t get me wrong.. it’s not like they are super-intelligent (well.. they perhaps are), but it’s mainly they are ready to try a whole tonne of things. They do their 50 hours of research on a subject & hence make educated guesses.

They are useless in office politics.

They usually are as upfront as they come. Candor is not something they can control. Hence, they are more interested in getting the work done, rather than wasting time trying to suck-up to their bosses.

They have very good work-life balance.

Since they tend to do things on their own, with very high productivity.. they are able to limit their number of hours worked for optimal performance. John Pencavel from Stanford did an extensive study on hours worked and productivity and it very clearly shows how ineffective extra hours is to getting the work done, after a certain number.

They need autonomy.

Set their goals & get out of their way. Let them do things on their own. They treat it as their own project & will give heart-and-soul to make it work.

Don’t give them autonomy.. and they’ll happily move on to someone else.. it’s virtually impossible to hold them if they aren’t given the freedom.

Their biggest “con” is that they just aren’t treated as team players.

- The trick is to work one-on-one with their team members & try to make them understand what / why they are doing something.

- They also need to understand that not everyone is / can be a 10x like them. So, they’ll just need to accept that everyone has their own style of working.

- They need to focus on making it a Result-Oriented team and if they can do that.. it’s the Dream Team!